


Paradise Lost

by kysnv



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Temporary Character Death, Demons, Enemies to Lovers, Grief/Mourning, Hell, Hellhounds, Hurt/Comfort, Lucifer's Cage (Supernatural), M/M, Season/Series 12, Season/Series 13, Slow Burn, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-01-24 07:40:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21334636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kysnv/pseuds/kysnv
Summary: Long after Lucifer wormed his way out of the Cage, Adam and Michael have finally found their own escape. Michael is intent on getting out of Hell so he can deal with the threat of the Darkness – something he needs a vessel for – but Adam is sure that even if Michael can save the world from the Darkness, he won’t let his fated battle with Lucifer fall to the wayside. Also, he’s an asshole.Very soon it becomes clear leaving Hell is easier said than done and Adam and Michael are forced to rely on each other as they search for a way out, finding a few other unexpected allies as a new threat from the depths of Hell makes itself known.
Relationships: Gabriel & Adam Milligan, Gabriel & Michael (Supernatural), Michael/Adam Milligan
Comments: 6
Kudos: 60





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe I'm actually posting this. It's been in the works since early on in season 11 but I've only just recently managed to finish rewriting the first chapter for about the tenth time. I'm going to be a bit busy the next few weeks so I don't know if I'll have time to finish up chapter 2 until then, but hopefully I can get it posted soon.
> 
> More tags will likely be added as other characters show up. To save any confusion: this probably isn't going to tie in with what's going on with Hell in season 15. I thought about it a lot, but decided I like the original plan I had and, for now at least, I'm gonna stick with it. But that might change as the rest of the season airs.
> 
> Please be warned, they're in Hell. It's a shitty place. I'm not going to be able to tag every horrible thing because I won't remember it all, but I'll try to mention the worst stuff at the beginning of each chapter. The only thing I can think of in this one is some non-sexual consent issues. If there's something you think I should have mentioned but didn't, please let me know. Also this is unbetaed so if you find any spelling mistakes, you can let me know about that too.

Adam holds his hand up in front of his face. It’s dark, so dark he can barely see the outlines of his fingers as he tries to flex them. There’s a pulse of that light from the other side of the Cage; for a second Adam sees his skin blistered red from the cold, then his hand gets too heavy and he wraps his arms around his knees again, huddled in his corner.

He should get somewhere warm. He’s known that for a while. But he’s tired, and it’s not like he can go anywhere. Besides, he keeps falling asleep and waking up again and it’s happened so many times he’s lost count, and yet he keeps waking up, so.

He doesn’t even feel cold anymore. He hasn’t for a long time.

There’s another pulse as Michael hits the web of cracks in the wall of the Cage, like he’s forcing the light through with every hit. He draws back. Strikes again. The push and pull of it is almost hypnotic and Adam waits to fall asleep again, the air biting his lungs.

Maybe he does fall asleep again, maybe he doesn’t, but the next thing he knows, he’s looking at icy ground through the latticework of the Cage. It’s gone in the next second, replaced by the storm clouds he’s so used to seeing outside.

Michael pauses. Adam blinks.

“What was that?” he croaks.

Michael presses his palm to the wall as the power he’s been putting into his punches seems to settle in the line of his back. “The illusion is weakening.”

He pulls back and strikes again with renewed energy.

Adam doesn’t press for more information. He’s mostly just surprised he got an answer - Michael’s been so focused on breaking out, Adam was half convinced he’d forgotten he wasn’t alone. He drops his head back against the wall, resigned to watching the storm until he falls asleep again.

He hears Michael hit the wall, once, twice, three times-

Adam glances over at just the right second; Michael’s fist connects and with a burst of light the wall shatters, sending pieces of metal flying, skittering across the black, icy ground.

Adam feels like he’s forgotten to breathe. His mind short-circuits. Michael can’t have - the Cage isn’t supposed to break. Adam’s been here long enough, he knows this. But there Michael is, standing at the edge of that wide open space.

Light begins to spill from Michael’s skin. It engulfs him, unfurling like solar flares until it blocks out the clouds, until it’s all Adam can see.

Hundreds of torch-like eyes blink in and out of his vision. Some of them meet his gaze and he’s sinking, pinned as he remembers the last time he saw Michael like this. There’s something different, though – dark fissures that weren’t there before. Adam fights to clear his clouded thoughts, but Michael has turned away now, uninterested. Light presses into the arches of a dozen wings which stretch out wide overhead, feathers quivering before Michael relaxes again.

_Yes_, Adam thinks. _Leave_.

Michael’s wings beat once, twice. A sound like war drums thunders out into the darkness once, twice, and Adam half expects an army of angels to come down from above. But nothing happens. Michael doesn’t even leave. The light starts to recede, leaving spots in Adam’s vision and giving way to the human form Michael had before; dark hair, ready hands, and olive brown skin.

He turns back to Adam, who presses back into his corner as Michael crouches down in front of him. Two fingers press against Adam’s forehead; warmth fills his lungs and he can breathe, can feel the heat of his blood as feeling rushes back to his limbs. He blinks, coming up to the surface of himself.

Michael rises. “Get up,” he orders.

Adam considers refusing but the Cage is freezing at his back, so he gets to his feet. He catches sight of his hands and starts - his skin is no longer red and blistered. “What did you do?”

“I healed you and raised your body temperature,” Michael says, crouching down to get a closer look at something on the ice.

Healed him. Right. And now that he’s not hypothermic anymore, Adam can feel just how cold it is here - he’s started to shiver and he shoves his hands into his armpits, shoulders hunched together to bar his neck from the cold. Lightning flashes overhead and flickers in the distance. He watches, waiting to spot something or someone out there, but there’s nothing, no wind or rain either, and no moonlight filtering through the clouds.

But there is one thing - a thin orange line on the horizon, splitting the darkness. Adam can see it in every direction, encircling them, and something about it makes his stomach twist.

“Where are we?” he asks.

“Hell.” Michael doesn’t even look up.

“So I guess everyone’s just on their lunch break,” Adam retorts, because Michael knows he knows that already.

Still crouched down, Michael doesn’t answer. Adam moves closer until he can make out what he’s looking at - he has one of the pieces of the Cage in his hand, fingers tight around the edges.

“It’s called the Pit,” Michael explains absently. “The Cage had to be put somewhere separate from the rest of Hell, somewhere almost impossible to get to so Lucifer’s followers didn’t get any ideas.”

Adam eyes the sharp point of the metal shard and the tick in Michael’s jaw, and then he processes what Michael’s saying. “Impossible to get to,” he echoes. “So how are we supposed to get out of here?”

Michael rises, the shard disappearing. Adam doesn’t see where it lands, but he’s distracted by Michael turning all of his attention on him.

“There’s a doorway to Earth nearby,” Michael says. “But I’ll need something from you.”

Adam frowns. “You want to me to say yes? You know you already look human, right?” As he’s saying it, he realises how the pieces don’t add up - where could Michael have found a vessel in the Cage? Isn’t that something Adam had wondered about ages ago?

“This is only a visage. It will hold up here, but on Earth I’ll need a vessel. I’ll need your consent again.”

“Yeah? Well tough luck, because you’re not getting it.”

Raising an eyebrow, Michael says, “I thought you wanted to see your mother again. Or would you rather stay here?”

“Who do you think I am, Charlie Brown? I’m not falling for that again,” Adam snaps, the mention of his mom spearing open something he doesn’t want to think about. But the last thing Michael said catches – will he really leave Adam here if he doesn’t say yes?

Stupid question. Of course he will.

“How about some more incentive?” Michael suggests. “I know you remember when the Darkness descended, how powerful it was. It did in a second what Lucifer and I never could have done together. It wants to destroy everything my father created, and Lucifer can’t stop it on his own.”

Adam eyes Michael. He does remember when the Darkness escaped - how could he forget that loud crack splitting the air, feeling like it was splitting his skull, his teeth? He’ll never forget that, or the sounds Lucifer and Michael made. Their terror and rage was unlike anything Adam had ever seen.

He didn’t ask about it until long after they’d calmed down, not wanting to bring attention to himself. Their answers had been short and tense, but he learned more about it later. He learned a lot from Michael and Lucifer’s conversations-come-arguments; they often seemed to forget they weren’t alone, or at least presumed he was asleep, which was fine by Adam.

So he knows Michael’s telling the truth and he knows how bad the Darkness is. But he also knows both Michael and Lucifer believe the Earth belongs to them. When they’re done getting rid of the Darkness they’ll go right back to trying to kill each other, and they’ll destroy half the planet in the crossfire.

“And what happens afterwards?” Adam asks, not wanting to let on how much he’s overheard in the past. “You and Lucifer aren’t just going to put aside your differences forever, are you?”

“I have to kill my brother,” Michael says. “That hasn’t changed.”

Adam clenches his jaw, feeling hot despite the chill in the air. “People will die.”

“And they’ll get to see their loved ones again,” Michael tells him with an undercurrent of impatience in his tone. “But the Darkness will unravel existence. Heaven, Earth, Hell - they’ll all be gone, as well as everything in between.”

Thunder rolls. Michael glances in the direction it came from. “You don’t have to decide right now,” he says, looking back at Adam, “but we don’t have time to keep standing around debating.”

“I’m not saying yes,” Adam tells him.

“You will,” Michael says with an unwavering assurance that makes Adam want to punch the smile right off his face. “This way.”

He turns and starts walking away without so much as a look back. He doesn’t seem to care that he’s walking out into a storm, but then again, the Cage is made of metal and Adam doesn’t remember it ever being hit by lightning.

Adam’s nails bite into his palms. He could stay here. Prove Michael wrong. Make things that little bit harder for him. But he’s getting further and further away, just a dark outline now, and there’s a sinking feeling in Adam’s stomach. He can’t just let Michael go. He doesn’t know how to stop him, but he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he didn’t do something and for now, following Michael is the only thing he can think of.

Adam glances around one last time, as if another solution will appear out of nowhere. Nothing happens, so he makes his feet move, going after Michael before he completely loses sight of him.

* * *

Hours pass in silence. Adam’s shivering melts away the further they get from the Cage and so does the ice, leaving rocky ground he has to be careful not to stumble on in the dark as the storm rages on above them. While they walk, Adam takes off his jacket and overshirt and ties them around his waist.

Sweat trickles down his neck and he rubs it away. He’s never liked the heat for just this reason - the sweat - although grudgingly he admits maybe it’s better than being hypothermic like before. Yeah, he got to sleep a lot, but it wasn’t worth barely being able to move his limbs when he was awake, or the mind fog, either.

How long was he even there for? For some reason the first answer that comes to mind is ‘years’, but if that’s true - how is he still alive?

Maybe he’s not. He’s in Hell, after all. Last time, he didn’t know he was dead until the angels told him, so maybe he forgot again; maybe he’s reliving something that’s already happened. If only he knew how it ended, and what to do about Michael. And what had happened to Sam.

Something in his chest tightens. Adam wouldn’t consider watching your half-brother getting tortured by the Devil to be quality bonding time, but Sam and Dean had come back for him before, and Sam had still been there whenever the archangels took their anger out on each other. Adam hadn’t been alone, and so he can’t help but worry about Sam now.

He can’t have said yes again. Lucifer needed his consent to escape – it was one of the few things he and Michael had been in agreement about – and then he escaped, but Adam won't believe Sam did it. He wouldn’t say yes again, not after what Lucifer did.

He wouldn’t.

Pushing down the unease that rises in him, Adam looks around. Even though they’ve been walking for hours, the storm hasn’t eased up, thunder often crashing overhead. Sometimes all Adam can see of Michael ahead of him is his silhouette in the lightning.

The orange line on the horizon has thickened. Maybe it is some sort of sun, because it casts a weird wash of light, only barely there. Adam’s legs ache, his throat dry from thirst, and eventually he starts to lag behind. Despite having his back to Adam, Michael is quick to notice; he waits for Adam to catch up and reaches for his forehead.

Adam jerks back. Michael’s hand hovers there as the corners of his mouth twitch downwards, and then he touches Adam. Something rushes through him, cool and refreshing, the heavy ache all over his body vanishing.

They keep moving.

The ground starts to steepen, the incline barely noticeable at first, and soon it rises up into a cliff in front of them, stretching left and right as far as the eye can see. Michael finds a narrow path winding its way up the face of the cliff and Adam’s fine with heights, he is, but as they get higher up he still sticks close to the wall of rock at his side. It doesn’t help that he can barely see where he’s stepping and his only consolation is that if the path drops off ahead of them, Michael will be the first to know.

He doesn’t realise how high they’ve gotten until, at a place where the path widens a bit, Michael stops to heal Adam again. As his tired ache disappears, Adam clenches his jaw, looking down at how far they’ve come but not really seeing it at first.

He doesn’t exactly know why, but he doesn’t like this healing thing Michael does.

They have to be at least half a mile up. The orange light comes from over the top of the cliff, casting long, weird shadows over the plain far below, and the lightning is distant and dull. Without the moon- or star-light that looks so natural on Earth, Adam could almost be looking down on an alien planet, but it’s too empty and dark and strange to inspire anything in him except the desire to leave.

* * *

By the time they reach the top of the cliff, Adam’s shirt is sticking to him, his blood pounding in his skull, and he sways on his feet, staring at what lies ahead. About a hundred yards away, a wall of flames and smoke billows up into the clouds, moving, shifting. Adam’s heart sinks - this fire, the source of the orange light, follows the edge of the cliff in both directions, with no end in sight. It surrounds the Pit, surrounds them.

There’s no way around it. They climbed up here for nothing.

“I thought you said this was the way out,” Adam says.

“It still is,” Michael says, his expression tightening as he watches the fire, and then he turns to Adam. “Our doorway is somewhere on the other side. There’s a spell that can get us across, but it requires the blood of a vessel. One who’s already been possessed.”

The words wash over Adam like ice. Michael wants his blood. For a spell. Aren’t angels supposed to be against that sort of thing? Also, what the fuck? “That’s messed up,” he manages.

“Needs must,” Michael says, and Adam gets the feeling he’s being rushed. “If it makes you feel any better, we don’t need much. Half a pint, at most. You won’t even notice it’s gone.”

“Right,” Adam says offhandedly as his thoughts shift into gear. “This is the only way?”

“Yes.”

“Then no. I like my blood where it is.”

Michael raises an eyebrow. The fire is a roar in Adam’s ears.

“Maybe I wasn’t clear on the details,” Michael says tightly. “This isn’t something I need your consent for.”

Adam clenches his jaw. He’s so sick of these angels - Lucifer torturing Sam, and Zachariah torturing both Adam and Sam, and Michael allowing it. Fuck them. If Michael wants his blood, Adam’s not just going to give it to him. He meets Michael’s gaze and sees a flicker of anger before Michael’s expression hardens.

There’s a flash of silver in Michael’s hand. Adam jerks back, swearing. Michael’s fingers close around his wrist. He tries to wrench out of Michael’s grip but it’s like iron and then Michael is cutting across the inside of his arm with the dagger he _definitely_ didn’t have before.

Adam cries out. Blood spills over his arm, dripping thick and dark onto the ground. Michael kneels, dragging Adam down despite his struggling.

“Let go!” Adam growls.

Michael’s grip tightens in reply and he starts smearing Adam’s blood on the ground. Pain throbs in Adam’s arm, his pulse thrumming in his ears and making his head ache, and it’s not until he accidentally scratches himself trying to pry Michael’s fingers from his wrist, that he realises Michael’s saying something, almost like a chant.

It’s not English or any other language Adam knows of, but the short, blunt sounds are still familiar. In the back of his mind, Adam realises Zachariah used the same language to communicate with Michael somehow, to call him when he’d thought Dean had said yes.

His blood glistens in the light from the fire, showing weird symbols on the dark ground. This is Michael’s spell? A couple of shapes and some blood and weird words are going to get them through the fire? Wrapping his head around angels and Heaven and Hell wasn’t as hard as Adam might have thought, but magic too?

Michael finishes chanting, painting one last stroke. There’s a sound like the crack of a whip. The flames recoil into the ground, parting a wide break in the blaze directly ahead of them. Michael pulls Adam to his feet and he doesn’t let go as they near it. Adam has given up on struggling; Michael’s just too strong, and he doesn’t know what he’d do if he managed to slip from Michael’s grasp, anyway. Instead he puts pressure on his arm, wincing at the pain, and tries to decide whether his light-headedness is from dehydration or blood loss.

Most of the smoke has cleared where the fire has parted, the heat a lot more bearable. As they get closer, Adam can see the ground is smoother where the fire was; it’s almost like ice on a river, except it’s grey in colour. As he steps onto it he half expects his shoes to go up in flames from the residual heat, but the spell must have taken care of that too and now Adam can see swirling patterns underfoot, like oil, or like the smoke and flames have been frozen solid.

Friggin’ magic.

On the other side of the fire is a sheer wall of rock, impossible to climb, and from what Adam can see there are no pathways up. Michael lets go of him and kneels down again, wiping the blood still coating his fingers on the ground, and there’s another loud crack like before. The fire bursts to life, coiling up into the dark sky. Adam raises his arm to shield his face from the furnace of heat, one hand still clamped down over his cut.

Standing up, Michael goes to touch Adam’s forehead. Adam backs out of his reach, twisting to face him with a glare, and realizes belatedly that Michael doesn’t have his dagger anymore, nor can Adam see where he’s been keeping it.

“I can heal you,” Michael says.

Adam sways on his feet, feeling the heat and his blood between his fingers, a drop making it’s way down his arm. It’s only a shallow cut and from the way the bleeding has slowed, it’s probably already started to clot.

He sets his jaw and doesn’t say anything, but Michael seems to gather his answer anyway. Adam expects to have to deal with Michael forcing him to cooperate again, but no. Michael turns away, his gaze scanning the wall.

“This way,” he says, gesturing to Adam’s right. The wall follows the fire just as the fire followed the rim of the other cliff.

He doesn’t let Adam lag behind this time, instead putting himself between Adam and the wall. He stays a few steps behind, too, and Adam is starting to feel more and more like Michael’s prisoner, boxed in by Michael and the wall and the fire. After a few minutes, they come to an archway carved into the rock face. Roughly hewn steps lead down into flickering shadow. Michael pauses; after a moment he motions for Adam to keep moving.

“What’s down there?” Adam asks.

“It’s called the Labyrinth. It’s a security measure around the Cage,” Michael says. Adam can feel his gaze on the back of his neck. “You won’t like what you’ll find down there.”

They leave the archway behind, but it’s not long before they pass another one, and then another. Five, ten, twenty more. Adam’s cut has stopped bleeding, but he’s still worn out, his legs aching, his throat dry, and the heat only makes things worse. Even so, he refuses to regret not taking Michael up on his offer to heal him, and Michael doesn’t offer again, anyway. He seems too focused on the archways – he pauses at each of them, his gaze sweeping the frame of the arch before moving on.

Adam eyes them furtively, not sure whether to believe Michael's explanation. With so many exits - or entrances - it seems like a pretty useless labyrinth, not to mention some really unreliable security. Why not just a wall? He tries to get a glimpse of what might be past the bottom of the steps, but it's too difficult to do without making Michael suspicious, and he's already sticking too close for comfort.

Is it worth trying to make a break for it? _No_, Adam thinks almost immediately. Clearly Michael expects him to, or why else would he be keeping such a close eye on him?

Would escaping Michael even do Adam any good? He'd be stuck in Hell, and Michael would just go to Earth without him; so much for trying to stop him from leaving. Then again, Michael's already proved himself stronger, more powerful, more knowledgable about their situation. How is Adam supposed to stop him?

He doesn’t get the chance to figure it out. Michael stops short at one of the archways, reaching out and running his fingers over the spot where a keystone would be. He smiles.

“What is it?” Adam asks, heart thudding dully behind his ribs.

“The way out.”

This archway is identical to all of the others. Even the spot Michael’s noticed looks no different, but something keeps Adam rooted to the spot, unwilling to look closer.

He’s about to ask what happens next when a sliver of light seeps from Michael’s fingertip. Now he can see the small symbol etched into the rock as the light fills it’s grooves, and then the light grows, spreading until the archway is framed in it, and Michael’s eyes are bright, purposeful - and then the light dies.

All Adam can hear is his own breathing and the roar of the fire behind them. He risks a glance at Michael; his face is blank. He’s a statue in the sudden darkness.

It didn’t work. Whatever it was supposed to do - they can’t leave. Michael can’t leave.

Adam feels weirdly separated from the situation as Michael tries again, and the light is brighter this time but it still doesn’t work, and Michael slams his fists against the wall with a yell. Light bursts out along the wall like a shockwave. Adam stumbles back, swearing, and the light ripples and fades once more.

“Performance issues?” he snaps.

Michael turns on him. “Give me your hand.”

Adam’s cut has stopped bleeding but the pain is still there. He grinds his teeth, feeling another headache coming on. “No.”

“There’s a bigger picture here, Adam,” Michael says, his tone low and dark. “The universe will be unmade. There’ll be nothing left to go back to. No Earth, no Heaven - nothing. You’ll lose any chance you have of seeing your mother again.”

“And that’s your bigger picture, is it? Making sure I get to see my mom again?” Adam says, flaring up at the angels’ enduring need to drag his mom into this shit. “Yeah, right. Pull the other one.”

Rage flickers across Michael’s face. His hand goes for Adam’s forehead, but Adam ducks out of reach. If he can make it to one of those other archways – but before he can break into a run, some invisible force slams his back into the wall, winding him. He can’t move and he gasps for breath as Michael looms over him.

“Let me go,” Adam grunts out.

“You would still be in the Cage if not for me,” Michael says. “You should be grateful.”

“I was only there in the first place because of you!”

Michael smiles cruelly. “You were there because Sam pulled us in. Your brothers orchestrated this, Adam. You think humanity is good? You think it’s worth saving? They left you there.”

Cold grips Adam’s chest, his head aching as he tries to process Michael’s words. Sam had never said – but then he was always either unconscious or being tortured – was this why Lucifer only took his anger out on Sam and not Adam? Was this why Michael never tried to stop Lucifer? Adam tries to think, tries to remember if Lucifer and Michael ever mentioned this in the Cage while they thought he wasn’t listening, but it all feels like a blur right now.

Michael seems to take his silence as realisation and the corner of his mouth ticks upwards.

“Fuck you,” Adam grinds out. He can barely form a coherent thought but all he knows is he doesn’t want to hear whatever else Michael has to say. “Let me go.”

“You’re very demanding for someone in your situation.”

“I said, let me go,” Adam growls. “And good luck saving the universe without a vessel, you asshole!”

Michael’s lip curls. Blood pounds in Adam’s ears.

“Go, then,” Michael says at last. The invisible force disappears and somehow, Adam’s legs don’t buckle under him. “Dean gave in once. He’ll do it again.”

Regardless of what his brothers did or didn’t plan, Adam doubts Dean will say yes, but instead of arguing he takes a step away from Michael, and then another. When Michael doesn’t stop him he turns and leaves, fighting the impulse to glance back as he follows the fire back the way they came, and at the first archway he comes to, he doesn’t think twice before descending the steps into the flickering firelight, leaving Michael and his empty archway behind.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, last decade: i'll probably have the next chapter up in a few weeks  
me, now: whoops?

Michael regrets letting Adam go as soon as he’s out of sight. Adam was supposed to be the easiest part of all this, but now without a vessel Michael’s back to square one and he grinds his teeth, turning back to the empty archway and the Enochian sigil carved into the top of the arch.

_Passage_.

Something boils up in him. It was supposed to work – he had it all in his grasp, he could feel it all back in the Cage as it got closer and closer to breaking. He could feel the stretch of his wings, the heat of the river of holy fire, the press of grace between a vessel's ribs. The weight of a small spiral blade in his hand, the tilt of the Earth's axis set right. There was an inevitability to it all but now when he reaches for it there's nothing there waiting for him, beckoning.

He's rudderless and he loathes it. Give him a war, give him a plan, give him anything but this _stagnation_.

The river is like a furnace at his back. It licks at his wounded grace with barbed tongues, an echo of the holy fire spreading from his midriff in Stull Cemetery. Throwing himself at the cracks in the Cage for decades on end has made it worse by far, not to mention those few times he and Lucifer came to blows when words stopped being enough.

Michael had thought maybe he was too injured for his grace to register in the sigil – the doorway opens with his grace and only his – but no, that's not how these things work. Even if it was, the amount of grace leftover in Adam from when Michael wore him wouldn't be enough to open the door with his blood.

It's possible he shouldn't have suggested it. Adam was already dragging his feet and Michael shouldn’t have tried to force him to cooperate.

He rarely had this problem with the angels. He or Raphael said _jump_, they asked _how high_, and if they didn't, they ended up regretting it. The good life.

Here, Michael's connection to the host is silenced by some natural machination of Hell – likely the same one keeping him from flying and healing his grace. It was unnerving in the Cage, and that only worsened when the Darkness descended. With Lucifer and his connection to Sam gone, Michael has no way of knowing what she's doing apart from 'looking for dear old Dad', according to Lucifer. Michael would wish her luck if he wasn't worried what she’d do if she miraculously found him, or what she’ll do when she inevitably doesn't.

She might have already given up and started tearing things apart. It's the only explanation Michael has for why the doorway won't open – with no Earth on the other side, it would be rendered broken, useless. But why not destroy Hell, too? She wouldn't see any difference between it and Earth and Heaven – all places God created, and therefore worthy of her destruction. Michael can't make sense of any of it.

He looks up at the smoke clouding the sky. The smell of the burning holy oil fills the air, so strong he can almost taste it, the abomination of something earthly and undeserving made sacred.

He can't stay here. He has to try the host's other doorway or one of Hell's gates. Either way, it means going through the Labyrinth, which will add more time to his escape than he cares to spare.

And as much as he hates to admit it, finding and convincing Dean will take too long. Michael needs Adam.

He sighs, scowling at the sigil. When he took over Adam's body, he neglected to heal over the Enochian sigils on his ribs which hid him from the host... But it won’t hide Michael’s grace from him. He reaches out now, searching for the familiar touch of his own grace, and he follows the tug of it into the Labyrinth, resolving to do better at keeping his vessel this time around.

* * *

The floor drops down into gaping darkness. Adam leans as far over the edge as he dares, lowering his flickering torch to it, but all he sees are the slips and shadows of the shaft’s rough stone walls. Unlike the rest of the Labyrinth, where the air is still and parched, here there’s a slight wind current rising from the depths of the shaft, like hot breath on Adam’s skin. He’s only glad he’s not sweating anymore, so it doesn’t feel like hot _wet_ breath. Small mercies.

Carried on the air is a smell he can’t place, but it feels ancient and makes him grip the torch tighter and rethink dropping it to see how far it’ll fall. He steps back.

He kicks a stone. It skitters across the ground, disappearing over the edge and waiting for two, five, ten minutes gets Adam nothing echoing back up but the eerie, reverberating drone he’s been hearing since he rounded the corner and found this shaft. It’s low and quiet, ever-shifting in tone, and it creeps up his spine and makes his teeth and fingernails hurt.

He passed another turn just before this one and he doubles back to it quickly.

Walking through the Labyrinth is like being underground, with tunnel-like corridors that look like they were gouged out of the rock instead of built. It’s a few minutes before Adam realises he’s still holding the torch, which he took from a bracket on the wall near the shaft. He doesn’t need it – the corridors are all lined with them, casting shivering firelight on the ground – but he keeps it anyway, just for the semblance of safety it gives him.

After the warning Michael gave, Adam keeps expecting to turn a corner and come across someone being tortured or something, but all he finds are more empty, sinuous tunnels. Stairs take him up into dead ends and down into more corridors. He’s painstakingly aware of how loud his footsteps are in the silence, and that this is the first time he’s been alone since before the Cage – maybe even since before he died.

He’s not sure how long it’s been since he left Michael. A few hours, probably, but his words are still stuck in Adam’s head, and he hates the uncertainty that accompanies them. He’d assumed the four of them ended up in the Cage because of Michael or Lucifer – that maybe one of them opened it to throw the other one in instead of killing a brother. But now that he thinks about it, the archangels may have argued with each other, but right from the start it was Sam they were pissed at the most. It was Sam who suffered from Lucifer’s rage, and Michael’s lack of interference.

Sam and Dean even told Adam they were trying to find a way to stop Michael and Lucifer. This must be what they came up with, and Adam hates the feeling that rises in him, angry and stupid and painful, and he hates that it was_ Michael_ who clued him in; hates that after everything Michael’s done, all the evidence points to there being truth in what he said. Did they plan Sam’s escape, too? Why not Adam’s?

The hairs on the back of his neck prickle. Holding the torch at the ready, he turns, but there’s nothing behind him. He waits, trying to tune out the drum of his pulse in his ears, and then he hears it – a scuffling sound from ahead.

Shadows round the corner at the end of the corridor, belonging to two _things._ At first glance they could almost be human, but the way they move makes Adam’s mind scream _wrongwrongwrong_, not to mention the bony limbs and the thick black smoke clinging to them, coming _from_ them.

They spot him and go still. Black eyes glint in the light from his torch. One of them smiles and starts to creep forwards, the second one close on it’s heels, twitchy but following the first one’s lead. Adam forces his feet to move and steps back, just as careful and slow as them.

“Lost?” the first one asks, the voice surprisingly human-like.

Adam’s mouth drops open for a split second before he snaps it shut and says, “No.”

“_Liar_. They punish you for things like that here.”

“So I’ve heard.” They’re about twelve feet away. Adam keeps moving backwards. He passed another corridor just a few minutes ago, but he doesn’t know if he can run fast enough.

“You’ve _heard?_” the first one says, face twisting in confusion. “You haven’t seen, you haven’t felt? How did you get here?”

Adam opens and closes his mouth. The second one is getting impatient.

“There’s an easy way to find out,” it says.

The first one is quiet, it’s dark gaze on Adam, considering him, and Adam doesn’t know what this _easy way_ is but with a sinking feeling he knows he won’t make it to the other corridor.

Both of them lurch forward. Adam seizes, stumbling as the first one launches at him. His back hits the ground and the torch slips from his grip. It’s on him, holding him down. Fingers pry open his jaw. Smoke clouds his vision. He chokes on it, struggling, fighting to push the thing off him, but it’s too strong.

Footsteps. The weight on his chest disappears and he can see again, can breathe. He sits up in time to see the creature thrown through the air; it hits the wall at the other end of the corridor and crumples.

Michael grabs the second one by it’s shoulder, unfazed by the way it struggles and screeches. Adam gets to his feet as Michael puts his palm to it’s forehead, and white light flashes through the body, flesh and smoke burning away until there’s nothing but dying ashes. With nothing between them anymore, Adam’s eyes meet Michael’s.

At the end of the corridor, the first creature shifts, moving to get away. Michael pulls something silver out of nowhere and throws it; the hilt of a weapon sticks out from it’s chest and it, too, burns away, and a short sword clatters to the ground.

Adam’s heart is racing, thudding against his chest. He can still feel the smoke at the back of his throat, can still taste it, rotten and thick. It’s too much. He staggers over to the wall and retches, but his stomach is empty and nothing comes up.

When his stomach has finished it’s revolt, he finds Michael watching him. The torch he was carrying is still on the ground and the flames have gone out.

“What were those things?” Adam asks, his legs feeling like they’ll give out from under him any second now.

“Demons,” Michael says. “You’re lucky I followed you.”

Demons. _Jesus Christ_. And of course. Of course Michael followed him. Adam squeezes his eyes shut, trying to block everything out so he can _think_. When he opens them again, Michael seems... relaxed. Content.

“You knew, didn’t you? You knew there’d be some nearby, that’s why you followed me,” Adam says, only realising it as he says it. “You’re not going to let me go, are you?”

Michael’s brow furrows and he smiles. “Do you really still want me to? If I hadn’t been here, they would have possessed you.”

Adam feels sick again. “But they need consent – _you_ –”

“I do. Demons don’t,” Michael says, “and these ones were only young. Any demon worth their salt would tear your soul from your body before possessing you. They’d torture you with your own hands and you’d become one of them, eventually.”

Adam swallows thickly. “They used to be human?”

Michael inclines his head. “It’s what Lucifer was cast out for. You’ve seen what he’s capable of.”

Adam thought there was some fruit involved, but doesn’t ask about it. Michael is right. He’s seen more than enough proof of what the Devil is capable of, and even if the demons can’t tear his soul out, Adam doesn’t doubt they’d torture or possess him. He still has the rotten taste of that smoke in his mouth to prove the latter.

“What’s your point?” he asks.

“There are other ways out,” Michael says. “On the other side of the Labyrinth.”

“So you’ve given up on Dean already, huh? That was quick,” Adam says. “But tough luck. I’m still not saying yes.”

Michael’s jaw works. When he speaks again, his voice is calm and controlled. “I can protect you, Adam.”

“You _cut_ _my arm open_.”

“And then I saved you. The demons won’t do you that courtesy.”

“Courtesy,” Adam scoffs. _Right, sure, that’s what it was_. He presses his lips together and sighs, gaze catching on the torch, still on the ground, and he asks, “How do you know these other ways out will work?”

“I have faith,” Michael insists.

“Yeah? How’s that been working out for you so far?”

Michael’s mouth twists. He looks almost murderous, and like he’s regretting every decision that led him to this conversation. “Are you coming with me,” he asks slowly, “or should I leave you to the demons?”

Adam looks away from Michael. He couldn’t fight these two demons off; he won’t be able to fight off any others. They’ll possess him or torture him or both, and he can’t do that again, can’t lose control of his body to something stronger than him. He’s not a vessel, he’s not something to be used and tortured and _dug into_-

God. Adam hates even considering Michael’s offer, but at least with Michael he gets a choice when it comes to the possession thing. And at least with Michael, he might not end up stuck down here forever. He’s the lesser of two evils, the devil Adam knows, and this is what you do, right? This is how you survive.

Guilt curls in Adam’s gut. “I’m not saying yes,” he says, but the words feel hollow.

He waits for the inevitable comment about broken records, but Michael’s gaze only lingers on him for a moment before he goes over to the other end of the corridor. Adam breathes and the weight of what he has and hasn’t agreed to settles like a vice in his chest.

He’d forgotten about the sword. Michael picks it up, wiping it clean on the sleeve of his jacket. As Michael nears him again, Adam realises it looks just like the one Dean used to kill Zachariah, and he sees this time how it disappears into thin air.

“How did you do that?”

Michael looks down at his hand. The sword appears in it again, then disappears. “I put it in a pocket dimension.”

“Like the dagger.”

“Yes.”

Demonic possession, Adam gets. Lucifer turning humans into demons through torture? Believable. A labyrinth in the middle of Hell? Sure, whatever. But he’s way too tired for pocket dimensions, and everything else that’s happened settles over him in a blanket of exhaustion. Michael is looking up and down the corridor like he’s deciding which way to go, but Adam refuses to let him do anymore of that healing voodoo stuff.

“I need to sleep,” he says.

Michael looks unimpressed and irritated. There’s a war waging in his eyes. Adam has enough energy to feel vindictive about it, but not enough to care about why Michael doesn’t just heal him.

“Four hours,” Michael says finally.

Adam’s too tired to argue that he needs twice that. He unties his jacket and overshirt from around his waist and bunches them up to put under his head. He lies facing the wall, with his back to Michael, and tries not to overthink whether or not he can trust him to stick around, and he falls asleep to the sounds of Michael’s footsteps pacing up and down the corridor.

* * *

Adam wakes up sweating and with the phantom feeling of scarab beetles crawling under his skin. Despite how much his body wants to go back to sleep, he doesn’t want to fall right back into his nightmare, so he forces his eyes to stay open, waiting for them to adjust to the low firelight of the torches.

He hasn’t had that nightmare since he was a kid.

When he sits up, Michael is opposite him, leaning against the wall. The torch Adam had when the demons found him is still on the ground. If Michael knows why Adam woke up, he doesn’t say anything about it, instead rising to his feet and saying, “Let’s go.”

He heads down the corridor. Adam guesses he’s had a direction in mind for hours and he lets his head fall back against the wall, sighing.

“How long is it gonna take to get out of here?” he asks.

“A very long time, if you’re just going to sit there,” Michael mutters, his voice still carrying from the end of the corridor, and he raises an eyebrow at Adam pointedly.

Adam’s still tired. He doubts he got the four hours Michael allowed him, but he doesn’t want to risk another nightmare, so he gets up and follows Michael, tying his jacket and overshirt around his waist again, leaving his torch behind.

He checks on his arm; the cut is scabbed over and looks clean. He debates tearing a sleeve off his overshirt to use as a bandage, but since it’s not bleeding, the only point would be to keep it clean, and his clothes aren’t exactly sterile, especially after sleeping on the ground. Thinking about the kinds of infections he could get down here only makes him wish he _hadn’t_ thought about it.

They fall into a routine of walking and resting, although Michael makes it abundantly clear they would make more progress if Adam said yes sooner rather than later. Adam doesn’t always sleep when they stop, partly because sometimes he just needs to rest his legs, but also because as tired as he gets, he doesn’t want to deal with the nightmares that are always waiting for him.

Sometimes, more often than he would have expected, it’s the same as the first one, with the scarab beetles. He can deal with that, but then there are the ones with Lucifer or the ghouls. Those are the ones that make him lie there both pretending to sleep and trying not to succumb to his exhaustion. It’s a weird thought, but he hasn’t felt fully rested since the Cage.

Things aren’t much better when he’s awake; the two demons that attacked him weren’t the only ones roaming the Labyrinth, and he and Michael cross paths with more than a few others.

Adam’s not sure how long it is between the first two demons and the third. He’s managed to sleep a few times, that’s all he knows. Michael’s in front, as always, and he rounds the corner first, Adam only realising something’s wrong when Michael’s blade appears in his hand.

The demon goes still at the same time Adam sees her. She takes a step back. Michael surges forward, grabbing hold of her and shoving her against the wall.

Adam swears loudly, backing off. The demon screeches and struggles against Michael’s grip, but when he puts his blade to her throat she freezes. She’s more solid and human-looking than the other two, with a lot less smoke clinging to her.

Michael doesn’t kill her. Instead, he says, “The more information you give me, the longer I let you live. Understand?”

“You’re supposed to be in the Cage-” the demon says.

“Am I?” Michael says. “Since you seem to know so much, why don’t you tell me what Lucifer’s up to?”

The demon’s face lights up, an evangelist in worship, and Adam braces himself for the worst.

“He’s back,” the demon whispers. “The Light-bringer has returned and he’ll make us great again. He’ll return us to our former glory.”

A few choice words about Lucifer and glory rush in Adam’s mouth. Torture isn’t glory. None of what Lucifer did to Sam made Adam think of calling him _Light-bringer_. But he bites the words back, not wanting the demon’s gaze turned to him, even with Michael between them.

“What’s he _doing_?” Michael says.

“He doesn’t tell _me_.”

“The Darkness, then?”

“I – I don’t-” the demon says, faltering, eyes darting down to the blade at her throat. “Let’s keep talking about Lucifer.”

Michael is quiet; everything is quiet except for the flames flickering in the torches nearby.

“I’m waiting,” he says.

“He – he has a vessel. The Winchester’s dog, Castiel.”

Adam’s breath catches. He thought-

“Castiel,” Michael says, frowning. “Not Sam?”

The demon’s face twists. “That traitor?” she snarls, and as she continues she gets more and more manic, the wisps of black smoke around her thickening wildly. “Turncoat, weasel, _deceiver, rat-_”

“Hey!” Adam growls hotly before he can think.

For the first time, the demon turns her attention on him. The black eyes are unnerving but Adam glares back at her, realising Michael and his blade are immovable.

“Little baby Winchester,” the demon spits out. “Why are you angry at me? That traitor came for Lucifer. He never came for you.”

He didn’t expect her to know who he is and it almost throws him off. Almost. “Maybe,” he tells her, spiteful, finding an odd strength in knowing Sam didn’t say yes again. “But that’s none of your business.”

She bares her teeth at him, but Michael jolts her hard into the wall and there’s a splinter of light where his blade meets her throat now. She goes still. Michael considers her.

“Anything else?” he asks.

The demon’s mouth opens and closes, her wide, panicked eyes searching Michael’s face. Michael cuts deep into her, the splinter of light flashing through her.

Michael questions most of the demons they come across, after that, but they never learn anything else. They hear ‘_I don’t know_’ a lot. Some of the demons have been in the Labyrinth so long they aren’t even aware Lucifer’s out of the Cage, or what the Darkness is. Once or twice, a demon gets close enough for Adam to smell that rotten smoke again, but Michael is always there. He kills all of them without breaking a sweat, if angels can, and for a little while afterwards, he even looks relaxed.

But the Labyrinth is too frustrating for anything like that to last. The corridors and stairs and dead ends all blend into each other, deja vu becoming a constant companion to the point where Adam starts actually paying attention to where they’re going, and then stops because it only makes things worse.

This is what’s going to drive him insane, he’s sure of it. Not being eaten alive. Not watching the devil torture his brother. No, it’s this stupid monotony, and the endless corridors, and the demons, and the nightmares.

And there’s no time. No minutes or hours. A day is what happens between when Adam sleeps, and the nights never last long. If he had his phone, it’d be a different story – at least until the battery died – but he doesn’t. In its place he has a vivid memory of the monster with his mom’s face prying it out of his hand, her fingers smearing blood on the keypad.

“They’re called ghouls,” Elliot had told him in Heaven, in a corner of the Windom Area High School gym while Adam’s prom date flirted with thin air. No one but Adam was aware of the two women who’d materialised amongst the throng of sweaty, dancing teenagers. “They take the form of the last person they ate.”

Nausea had filtered through the numbness Adam felt since learning he was dead. “My mom – was she alive while... Like I was?”

“You’ll have to ask her,” the other angel, Israfel, said impatiently. She and Elliot explained, then, why they were there – that they _needed _him – and Adam didn’t get much more info from them about his mom. It hadn’t bothered him, not after they told him he’d get to see her again, and now part of him is glad of it.

He doesn’t want to know if she suffered. He doesn’t want to know anything else they might have told him, because if it was anything good it probably would have been a lie, and now he’d now it wasn’t true. So he’s glad they didn’t tell him.

It doesn’t stop him thinking about it, though. What it was like for her; if the ghouls told her it was John’s fault, or if they told her Adam was next. He tries not to think about it, to save him the inevitable, painful lump in his throat, but with not much else to take his mind off it, it’s hard, and sometimes his eyes burn wet when he’s trying not to sleep and he debates giving in to his exhaustion because even the nightmares are better than this hole inside him.

Sometimes he’s lost to it, like he and Michael are lost to the Labyrinth. Sometimes it feels like this is it, forever, and nothing else.

* * *

They’ve been in the Labyrinth for a month when they find the room. Michael feels the thrum of something _other_ from a few corridors away; it’s quiet, barely there, but it offers a change from the directionless wandering and he takes it.

“What is it?” Adam asks when Michael starts walking faster.

“Magic,” Michael says.

He comes to a stop in an empty corridor, the thrumming still quiet but less muffled. Here, somewhere. Michael steps further along the corridor, his gaze scanning the featureless walls for something, anything, until... There. He can’t see anything, but he can feel it, and he reaches out to touch the wall, but instead of meeting stone, his fingers disappear into it.

“What the fuck?” Adam mutters from behind him.

Michael steps through and finds himself in a disarray of steel and iron, the metal glinting in the light from the torches on the walls. There’s hardly enough room to stand. A bare strip of ground goes through the middle of the space and out of sight around the corner. Behind him, Michael sees only the fake wall. In the corners of the other walls on either side of it are a few identical ancient Sumerian symbols. Simple spellwork.

“Michael?” Adam’s voice is close and clear despite the fake wall between them.

“It’s an illusion,” Michael tells him, turning back to the room. There are swords, axes, maces, daggers, branding irons, iron hooks, and more, all heaped up by the walls on either side of him like the slopes of a riverbank. “Someone’s made a hidden room.”

Adam comes through. The space feels too small. Michael can feel Adam’s warmth at his side; can hear his murmured swear, too close and tangible. Michael moves further in, further away.

“What is this place?” Adam asks.

There are a few whips tangled amongst the metal. Wooden boxes lie half buried under it all and Michael tips open the lid of the nearest one to find it full of thumbscrews and pliers.

“Looks like someone’s collection,” he says, thinking. People don’t generally hide things in places they can’t find again. He lets the lid fall shut as he takes in the rest of the room. It’s about the same width as the corridor outside and around the corner is a dead end with more boxes and weapons piled up. Pole arms and longswords lean into the corners.

“And by ‘someone’, you mean a demon,” Adam says, eyeing the clutter of weapons, and he frowns.

Michael waits for the inevitable question of how the demon finds their way here and back through the Labyrinth, but it goes unasked.

Reaching into the clutter, Adam pulls something free and holds it up, thumbing the distinctive triple edged blade. “Where do you get these things, Ikea?”

“It’s an angel blade,” Michael tells him. Before the apocalypse it would have been nigh impossible to find one outside of an angel’s possession, but it seems times have changed. “Every angel has one.”

Adam’s inspecting the blade, testing the grip of it like he’s planning on keeping it. Michael has half a mind to make him leave it behind – he never lets the demons get close enough to for him to have to fend for himself. And the thought of being down here long enough for Adam to learn how to use it...

But it doesn’t hurt to have contingencies. Adam is proof of that.

A map seems the most likely way for a demon to come and go so easily. There are other ways, such as using a tracking spell for a specific weapon, or for the room itself, but that would require ingredients. A map is much simpler. If the spellwork for the fake wall is anything to go by, this demon prefers simple.

Michael comes to the conclusion reluctantly. He doubts he’d find a second map here and he’s loathe to waste any more time, but even so, he starts going through the boxes in the dead end. From around the corner comes the sounds of metal on metal as Adam presumably picks up various weapons to look at before dropping them back on the piles.

One of the boxes has jars of pitch inside and another has books. Michael picks up the topmost one. It’s old, bound in leather, and the thick pages are barely holding together. The cover and first page are bare. There’s a title on the second page:

_Insects, Rats, and Bulls: an applicable guide to the uses of animals in torture._

Michael flicks through it. It’s handwritten and the many, many illustrations are hand drawn, and he finds it amusing – the thought of a demon studying the book, collecting more like it. The rest of the books are in a similar vein. Nothing particularly interesting, and no maps.

None of the other boxes offer anything useful and Michael’s gaze catches on one of the pole arms – a lance. The wooden shaft fits nicely in his hand. He lifts it, testing the weight and balance. He hasn’t seen his own lance for millennia, although it wouldn’t be hard to find if he wanted to. It’s become renowned on Earth, which often lends to a clear path through history.

The archangel blade, on the other hand... Michael discovered it was gone soon after falling into the Cage, and he still can’t figure out how he lost it. For thousands of years he kept it close, only rarely taking it out of his pocket dimension, and now it’s gone.

He still remembers the day his father entrusted it to him, newly created, the only one in existence. It was the only reason why he’d allowed his lance to be stolen, when one of Lucifer’s followers inevitably tried. Raphael found it amusing, that Michael never kept an eye on the lance until after it was out of his possession.

Something in Michael aches.

“_Raphael’s dead_,” Lucifer told him before he escaped, one of the few things he learned through his connection to Sam that he deigned to tell Michael. Michael knew it was true because Lucifer doesn’t lie, and because of the hitch in his brother’s breath when he said it. _Hypocrite_, Michael had thought, but he didn’t voice it. Neither of them had mentioned Gabriel for a long time, and Michael wasn’t going to be the one to do it first.

The confirmation from Lucifer felt like falling into the Cage all over again. Michael suspected something had gone wrong when centuries passed and Raphael never rescued them; he’d regretted, for the first time, not telling Raphael about the river of holy fire encircling the Pit and how to get past it. They might have spoken, made plans. Lucifer said more than once that Raphael had abandoned the cause, but after millennia of it being just the two of them, side by side, Michael couldn’t believe that of his younger brother. Not after Lucifer’s betrayal, not after their father and Gabriel left. Raphael wouldn’t abandon the promise of paradise, or the promise of rest.

Raphael’s dead. Not for the first time, Michael wonders how many dead brothers he will have when he returns to Heaven. Wonders if he’ll be the last archangel.

He tips the lance back to where it was resting. It doesn’t have any kind of spellwork or sigils to make it effective against demons, and although it would be easy enough for him to add some, it’s not the right kind of weapon for the close quarters the corridors offer. Besides, his angel blade is suitable enough.

They’ve lingered here long enough, wasted enough time. They should go. Michael glances around the room in case he’s missed something glaring and obvious, but it looks the same as before. Fruitless, pointless. But... Could the archangel blade be here, buried amongst the other weapons? What are the chances of him finding it here?

He reaches out with the senses of his grace, twisting through the metal, hunting for the touch of something bigger than him, for his father’s touch – but the room is empty of anything that might come close, and Michael scowls, annoyed at himself for wasting grace.

He’s so caught up in his thoughts, he doesn’t realise Adam still has the angel blade he found until they’re on the other side of the fake wall again. He’s even found a sheath and is fixing it to his belt. It’s not made for the unique shape of an angel blade, but it’s leather, and malleable enough, Michael figures.

“What are these symbols?” Adam asks. He’s peering at something on the base of the blade, where it meets the hilt.

“It’s our language. Enochian,” Michael says. Doesn’t look at Adam. “It’s the name of the angel it belonged to.”

The corridor is remarkably quiet in the wake of his words, even for the Labyrinth.

“Whose was it?” Adam asks.

When he offers Michael the blade, Michael doesn’t take it; he just tilts it so he can see the name better, him holding one end and Adam the other. Something in Michael eases at the lack of familiarity when he reads the name; for some reason, he was expecting to see Raphael’s name, or maybe even Gabriel’s.

“Bramael,” he says.

Adam is quiet, his expression unreadable. It’s almost like he cares, and Michael says nothing about putting the blade back. Better for Adam to have it than a demon.

He looks down the corridor, trying to remember which way they came, but in his mind’s eye all he can see are the imprints of an angel’s wings burned into the ground. Beings of light turned to crumbling dust, and forever beyond reach.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr](https://kysnv.tumblr.com/)
> 
> I also have an aesthetic/inspiration blog for this fic [here](https://hellhike.tumblr.com/)


End file.
